Healthcare, with the cut of 1.5 billion euros, a new sting for smokers is coming. In fact, a new tax on smoking will be introduced to finance the arrival of anti-cancer drugs.
15 September 2016 – Romagna Mamma editorial staff
Someone, in deference to extreme individualism, would like smokers (as well as drug addicts and alcoholics) to pay medical care yourself: the economic question, at least for these categories, would be resolved in this way. The (significant) disbursement for public coffers would decrease and not a little.
The Italian government, on the other hand, is evaluating another route and plans to use tobacco users to finance treatment for all cancer patients: to meet the cost of very expensive anti-cancer drugs of the latest generation in fact he is thinking of a tax on cigarettes. This would be an extra 20 cents per pack, one cent per cigarette, which would make it possible to raise around 700 million euros each year.
“We have been asking for the creation of a special fund for new anti-cancer medicines for some time – declares a Republic Carmine Pinto, president of Aiom, the Italian association of medical oncology - We are working on it together with Aifa and the ministry. It would be a structural intervention but in the meantime the purpose tax on cigarettes can also be fine, as a buffer measure ". For Silvio Garattini of the Mario Negri institute in Milan "more should be asked: one euro per package".
Related news: Healthcare: more cuts, the EU is asking for them. And there's a fee
